The Social Contract: How Autocrats Stay in Power

What would you do to have some power? Unmitigated control right in the palm of your hand. Now, lots of people would frankly do unspeakable things for such a privilege, but then there's another arguably more important question.

When you have power, what would you do to keep it? Dictators and autocrats alike across the globe asking themselves that question have come to the same conclusion. They must make a deal with their people, not out loud, but implicitly through their actions and with the inferred support from their citizens.

Some promise wealth, some promise stability, others promise everything under the sun, and today's topic is going to take us deep into the weeds of power politics, investigating the very fabric of what holds authoritarian regimes together, and eventually, how it all just comes apart at the seams. A deal with the devil, the social contract.